Tuesday, 16 August 2016

A Short History of the Printed Word (1998)

Above - a portion of the Decameron published by the Ashendene Press in 1920 - the image is from HERE. The type is the Ashendene Subiaco which was based on the type face created by Sweynheym and Pannartz at Subiaco, Italy, in 1465. The type is neither roman nor italic, but an earlier form of Carolingian script that predates the splitting of script into roman and italic.

Below - from A Short History of the Printed Word by Warren Chappell & Robert Bringhurst:

It is possible that printed books as repositories of human experience and creativity may in time be overshadowed or even replaced by digital replicas. Once made, such replicas are very quickly copied and easily stored in a small space—but they cannot be read without a prosthesis. They are invisible and useless without the intervention of an exceedingly complex, electrically powered machine. Such a scheme may look good to accountants and to marketers. But for authors and for readers, there can be no substitute for a well-designed, well-printed, well-bound book that one can see and feel as well as read. A tangible, stable, well-made page is just as desirable, and just as useful, now as it was in the fifteenth century.